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…with 66 days left before I leave, all is far from gloomy. You will have to pardon the superficial insights, regrettably ageist tenor, and more than slightly trollish tone of this vid, but at least you get to see — without having to actually come to F-L-A!!! — the beach where I often go to solve the problems of the world.

If you are interested in a truly insightful article on how a New York that no longer exists (one which I was fortunate to have experienced first hand) shaped Donald Trump”s lifelong urban-dystopia worldview — read this fine piece by Michael Kruse in Politico’s magazine section. If the New York of the 70s fascinates you, Fear City is a recently published book that I think is rather well written and comprehensively researched.

But, in the end, all that Trump and his odious eldest sons and his plastic-surgery daughter and wife and his various slimy acolytes and hangers-on crave is publicity, that, and dirty money, and a transient sense of power, derived from the Russian-backed hijacking of a presidency. Never has as illegitimate a President occupied the White House.

The point of my vid here is that Trump’s popularity is a stand-in, a stub for the failed nobodies who read the National Enquirer, paying the $5 with their Social Security money, or the idiot who resents black kids playing music while they gas up at Cumberland Farms and tries to run them over, or the aging psycho who shoots a stranger in a movie theater for texting before the start of the feature — all of which have happened in Florida. But if you are a soon-to-be expat, all of this repugnant Trumposity is fast becoming moot.

Doing a geographic can be chicken soup for the soul. Yesterday’s Mika/Morning Joe tweet storm is already moot. The health care bill machinations are moot, because it has no chance in hell of passing, unless the Republican party wishes to commit political suicide. Even the Muslim Travel ban is moot, except ethically, providing the compromised Supreme Court in November does not go full metal jacket into Planet Xenophobia.

One way or the other, I could care less. After all, the day after Labor Day, I will be here…

#1: Because a vulgarian whom alt-right trolls moronically associate with some bogus deity named KEK now has unfettered access to nuclear codes and can vaporize the world in one unhinged moment.

#2: Because this little man (tip of the hat to JK Rowling) can continue to menace the planet by bringing down The Glory That Was Rome, piece by piece, like some sort of latter-day Caligula.

Meanwhile, the bombings and slaughterhouse occupations continue. As do the terrorist counter attacks. We are paying for the ineffectuality of our politicians and the undue influence that continues to be exerted more than ever by The Donald’s shrinking 38 per cent. Vietnam lives on, somewhere else, but no different.

The inanity all around is endless. Neologisms like weaponized are weaponized. Irony becomes a contact sport, and fabrication and coded innuendo a cover for combover racism. High school humor passes for clever. The rage and hopelessness of jobless Americans is turned into fodder for neo-Nazis and right wing clowns.

* * *

I want out.

I’ve had enough. I’m tired of being fucked with. As a true wannabe, I want to be unfuckwithable, even tho I don’t have fuck you money, so don’t have to worry about being busted in, say, the Panama Papers, as happened to young Vishen of above vid fame.

Who doesn’t want to be unfuckwithable?

Besides, I’m not in the mood; I just don’t want to be part of it anymore.

And so, in exactly 90 days, I am leaving the United States.

I am truly sorry there is so much hate and injustice in the world (insert all the usual hand wringing platitudes here), but it’s not my problem at this point.

So I will take the easy way out.

I will tell myself: I didn’t cause any of this; and I can’t fix it.

* * *

And so, on to Gouna.

See friends and family, keep my nose out of politics, enjoy the sights, take some snaps, and ignore any visigoths I may come across.